Stibbs Mill

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About

Name

• Stibbs Mill

Manufacturing

• Grist Mills

Facts

Founded

• 1809

Dissolved

• Date unknown

Related

Key Persons

Founders

• Joseph Stibbs

Location

• Wooster, 44691, Ohio, United States

First grinding mill in Wooster, Ohio and Wayne County. It was also Wooster's first major disaster. Noted as maybe the Wooster's first industrialist. He later build an oil mill for the manufacture of linseed oil and a woolen factory.

• Mr. Robinson Poem
  • "God's blessing on Joe Stibb's mill
  • the hopper and the stones.
  • For it puts meat apon our back
  • And marrow in our bones."

Quick Facts

• 1809 - Established by Joseph Stibbs
• Explosion
  • Michael Switzer, Store manager was weighing out powder from an 18-pound keg
  • "At the same time several Native Americans were standing close smoking pipes filled with a mixture of tobacco, sumac leaves and kinnikinnick (yellow will bark}."
  • "Soon a puff of wind blew a spark from a pipe into the exposed powder causing a huge explosion."
  • "The mill was blown apart and Switzer was killed. The others suffered injuries."

Newspaper articles

• August 12, 1891: "Mr. George D. Hatfield.... That his father Robert Hatfield...Stopped at the old Stibbs mill and sold the wheat at 33 cents per bushel...", Wooster Republican, p. 2.

• June 24, 2012: "When Wayne was a Whippersnapper: Ann" by Paul Locher, The Daily Record, p. 123.

• May 24, 2019: "Bits and Pieces: The old ‘Mill Run’ in Wooster" by Ann Gasbarre, The Daily Record, p. 123.

• A sketch of Stibbs Mill before the explosion is located at the Wayne County Historical Society of Ohio.